those old Russian poets

I suppose there's no simple explanation, other than: it is what it is because sensibility.

Reading their poems -- lines becoming stanzas becoming a whole thing -- one is never left scratching his head, gnashing his teeth, and muttering furiously: "What the hell was that?"

Their poems are spiritually and actually comprehensible (not to mention disarmingly beautiful and the opposite of boring). One doesn't need to consult a hallucinating Egyptian oracle to translate Rorschach into English. They were generous and gracious toward their readers, even as they moved into the depths of their inspirations.

Therefore, those old Russian poets were masters of the art of language as poetry.